Police-Corrections Partnerships Collaborating for Strategic Crime Control

POLICE-

CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS

COLLABORATING FOR

STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

Alzheimer’s

IACP’s

INITIATIVES

This project was supported by Grant No. 2007-DD-BX-K110 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the United States Department of Justice.

Alzheimer’s

IACP’s

INITIATIVES

Executive Summary ... iii

Introduction ... v

Police-Corrections Partnerships Defined ... 1

Typologies ... 2

Partnership Objectives ... 3

The State of Practice ... 8

The Literature ... 9

Focus Groups ... 10

Site Visits ... 11

Field Survey ... 13

Police Operations Management Studies ... 15

Partnership Options and Evaluation ... 16

Synthesis ... 16

A Police-Led Partnership Model ... 18

A Corrections-Based Information Model for Police .. 19

Data Elements ... 20

Data Management and Integration ... 28

Incorporating the Model ... 29

Making Partnerships Work ... 30

Steps Toward Successful Collaborations ... 31

Challenges and How to Overcome Them ... 34

Tracking and Sustaining Progress ... 36

Probation and Parole: A Primer ... 38

Introduction ... 39

Who Are Probation and Parole Officers? ... 40

Specialization ... 41

Social Aspects of Probation and Parole ... 42

A Force for Positive Change ... 42

Appendix: Survey Results ... 44

Appendix: Sample MOU ... 49

CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS

COLLABORATING FOR

STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

III

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

State and local governments across the country are facing reduced budgets. Law enforcement agencies and correctional entities are experiencing residual effects through unprecedented staff reductions and declining resources. These reductions affect community services, including public safety, and impact the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, community expectations do not decline with the economy. Agencies are challenged to find new and creative ways do more with less. One way is to share resources and drive strategic crime control together.

Through a series of focus groups and site visits, a literature review, and a survey, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) examined the state-of-practice of police-corrections partnerships.

This report summarizes the results of our examination and presents a police-led, corrections-based information exchange model that should power police and corrections to achieve crime control objectives more effectively.

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PAR TNERSHIPS FOR CRIME CONTROL

Law enforcement and correctional agencies share a common goal: public safety through crime reduction.

Each pursues this goal from a different perspective: law enforcement seeks to maintain order while correctional agencies seek to rehabilitate. By joining forces, the two can leverage complementary

resources for mutual benefit. Despite this seemingly logical and natural fit, the potentials of police-corrections partnerships are struggling to find a place in the routine operations of either police or corrections. Most partnerships have an ad hoc or boutique nature about them and have not blended into the core work of police or corrections.

However, evidence is mounting that police-corrections partnerships can and do produce significant crime

control and prevention outcomes. While evidence does not meet rigorous standards for controlled

experiments, it is sufficient to advocate that corrections partnerships become a part of the institutionalized

portfolios of police agencies. This report presents one idea for doing so.

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

IV A POLICE-LED INFORMATION EXCHANGE MODEL

Practitioners cite information as the most valuable asset of corrections partnerships. Information sharing and exchange represent the most basic partnership and the building block upon which more collaborative crime control efforts can be initiated. This report presents a corrections-based information model for police.

Law enforcement agencies are encouraged take a leadership role in establishing relationships with corrections officials to share data and work together to drive smart, strategic crime control efforts. Very simply stated, police are urged to:

z Develop and institutionalize the most comprehensive base of information that corrections agencies can supply, that has potential use for traditional and innovative police operations (such as patrol, investigations, special operations, crime analysis, CompStat, smart/predictive policing, and fusion center exchange).

z Weave the use of the information as seamlessly as possible into those operations.

z Offer police data on offenders to corrections.

z Monitor and evaluate the value—the return on investment—of the information exchange approach.

DATA AND PAR TNERSHIP MANAGEMENT

The model was designed to be implemented without additional staff. Management of the data and the

partnership arrangement can absorbed by existing staff. However, records management system vendors and

software developers should strive to create programs that can capture, assimilate, and analyze corrections

data alongside traditional police data. More work is needed in the area of information exchange packet

development, advanced/predictive analytics, and shared database protocols.

V

INTRODUCTION

For years, the IACP has been involved in projects that stress the importance and value of law enforcement partnerships with corrections. In 2006, the IACP hosted a national policy summit on offender reentry to consider the role law enforcement executives and their agencies should assume in offender reentry efforts.

Since that time, the IACP has conducted uninterrupted police-corrections research and development work with financial support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), U.S. Department of Justice.

Key publications include the following:

z Sex Offenders in the Community: Enforcement and Prevention Strategies for Law Enforcement (2007) provides an overview of the sex offender population and examples of prevention and enforcement strategies from agencies around the United States.

z Building an Offender Reentry Program: A Guide for Law Enforcement (2007) is a comprehensive examination of law enforcement’s role in reentry initiatives including identification of promising practices and steps for building a reentry program.

z Offender Reentry: Strategies and Approaches to Enhance Public Safety —A Training Guide for Law Enforcement (2008) helps law enforcement to gain insight into reentry strategies through interactive and practical examples.

z Strategically Monitoring Sex Offenders: Accessing Community Corrections Resources to Enhance Law Enforcement Capabilities (2008) provides baseline information to improve communication between the law enforcement community and community corrections officers.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Law Enforcement National Data Exchange (N-DEx) Program is a

current and prominent initiative with police-corrections dimensions. Information sharing is a mission critical

component of today’s public safety mandate for local, county, state, tribal, and federal agencies to enhance

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

VI crime fighting. N-DEx is a powerful investigative tool that allows law enforcement agencies to submit and query incident data to make connections between person, places, events, and crime characteristics —linking information across jurisdictions and allowing officers to “connect the dots” between data that are not apparently related. The IACP, in partnership with the FBI, delivers a communications and educational outreach program to promote awareness and use of N-DEx. The goal is to discuss with the criminal justice community the benefits of sharing incident, offense, booking, corrections, and probation and parole information to assist the practitioner to effect arrests, investigate crimes, and conduct pretrial and sentencing inquiries.

MAINSTREAMING POLICE-CORRECTIONS PAR TNERSHIPS

This document builds upon and advances our previous work and reinforces the IACP’s commitment to police-corrections partnership building. In the 21st century policing environment where declining resources appear to be the new normal, leveraging partnerships to aid in crime control is a necessity. This project suggests—and the literature appears to show—that police-corrections partnerships produce quantifiable crime reductions. However, the potentials of police-corrections partnerships are struggling to find a place in police agency operations portfolios. While agencies are quick to assert their applications of community policing principles or CompStat models, ongoing interactive collaboration and data sharing with corrections officials are far less mainstream. In this regard, the “system-wide solutions” approach so frequently

advocated is underachieving badly.

Accordingly, the highlight of this work is a construct (model) to encourage and guide formal establishment and, ideally, institutionalization of police-corrections programming within law enforcement agencies. At this juncture, reentry programs, sex offender initiatives, and the more prominent partnership tactics (joint home visits, for example), seem to have a “boutique” nature about them. They have not blended into core police operations in a material way. The model that has been conceptualized seeks to mainstream police-corrections strategies, tactics, and specifically information, to address the mutual concerns of law enforcement and corrections, crime control in particular. Our expectation and hope is that law enforcement will take the lead in forging collaborative partnerships with correctional entities and use these relationships to drive strategic crime control.

THE WORK PROGRAM

Examination and analysis of police-corrections partnerships has been a subject of formally funded study for only the past decade or so. Study has been sporadic. The level of attention hardly rivals, for example, police leadership or gang control. Accordingly, the subject matter is still elusive.

Due to the limited information available on police-corrections partnerships, the IACP qualitatively and quantitatively examined the field in the following ways:

Literature Search. The published body of work, and a few still-to-be-published pieces, though limited, made an important contribution. Descriptions of partnership arrangements (case studies) have been especially useful.

Focus Groups. Four focus groups with aggregate participation of approximately 80 practitioners, including law enforcement executives and representatives from institutional corrections, probation, and parole.

Site Visits. Site visits to seven jurisdictions to interview police executives and partners to observe programs in action. Locations were identified through the focus groups as having promising programs. Five additional regional site visits were conducted in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

Survey. A narrowly-focused 21 item electronic survey was designed primarily to confirm observations

developed from peer group sessions. Responses approached 100.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPOR T VII

Chapter I, Police-Corrections Partnerships Defined, frames the report with a definition of police-corrections partnerships, supplemented by several typologies. The “case” for partnerships, an enumeration of potential benefits, anchors the chapter.

The State of Practice, Chapter II, summarizes the information gathered from the project in an effort to outline the characteristics of police-based corrections partnerships and to answer questions such as “What types of partnerships are common?” “What is the frequency of partnerships—how often do collaborations occur?” “Are they ongoing/institutionalized or situational?” “What do they produce—what are their values?” A table summarizing successful police-corrections partnerships is also included.

A Corrections-Based Information Model for Police, Chapter III, outlines a corrections-resourced information exchange model that should, properly built and exploited, empower police and corrections to achieve crime control objectives more effectively. It is an asset to be employed by police when they function as a member of a corrections collaboration or, equally, when they function independently.

Making Partnerships Work, Chapter IV, offers tips/guidelines for working effectively with corrections agencies, much of this gleaned from published literature and assembled experience, in itself a broad body of literature. Common challenges are also addressed.

Finally, Chapter V, Probation and Parole: A Primer, provides knowledge of the place, nature, and purposes of the parole and probation function.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Funding and support for Police-Corrections Partnerships: Collaborating for Strategic Crime Control came from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) within the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), U.S. Department of Justice. We are grateful to our Senior Policy Advisor, James Chavis III and BJA’s senior leadership for their support of this project.

We would also like to acknowledge the support and assistance from IACP’s Professional Standards, Image and Ethics Committee; Community Policing Committee; Patrol and Tactical Operations Committee;

Investigative Operations Committee; and their respective chairs, Chief (Ret.) Ron McBride, Chief Todd Miller, Chief Joe Kistle, and Peter Modafferi.

We are thankful to the agencies we visited to produce this guide. We also benefitted from input and

assistance from Bob May at the Association of State Correctional Administrators, Carl Wicklund from the

American Probation and Parole Association, Dr. Peter Scharf, Chief (Ret.) Darrel Stephens, Vincent Talucci,

Liz O’Connor, and James Jordan.

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

VIII

Typologies ... 2 Partnership Objectives ... 3

PARTNERSHIPS DEFINED

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

2 Police-corrections partnerships are formal and informal arrangements between police, sheriff’s departments, and corrections agencies to deter new criminal offenses by the persons most likely to commit them.

Corrections agencies fall into two categories, for both adults and juveniles: community corrections and institutional corrections. Community corrections agencies include probation, parole, and providers of alternatives to incarceration. Institutional corrections agencies include jails, prisons, and houses of corrections. In this document the term “police-corrections partnership(s)” refers to any working relationship between police departments and any type of corrections agency.

Police-corrections arrangements and relationships sometimes include additional agencies of government;

for example, health and social services, and non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, individuals, and community groups.

SECTION 1: TYPOLOGIES

The forms that a police-corrections partnership can take vary widely. An early and still influential typology was introduced in the landmark National Institute of Justice (NIJ) document Police-Corrections

Partnerships.

Enhanced supervision partnerships—joint police and corrections supervision initiatives aimed at high-risk probationers and parolees (e.g., violent individuals, sex offenders, gang members, and those with drug involvement). Enhanced supervision partnerships seek to deter offenders from committing new crimes or violating conditions of release by connecting offenders with treatment and employment services.

Fugitive apprehension—joint police-corrections operations formed to locate and apprehend probationers or parolees who have absconded, violating conditions of release.

Information sharing partnerships—police and corrections information exchanges focused on classes of offenders—and individual offenders—who have or may have interactions with both types of agencies.

Specialized enforcement partnerships—police-corrections partnerships that jointly address specific crime problems within a community (e.g., gang activity, firearms, and drugs).

Interagency problem-solving partnerships—executive collaborations between police and corrections agencies to identify mutual concerns and larger strategic issues, develop strategies, and allocate resources.

Reordering these types to construct a continuum is helpful:

1

Dale Parent and Brad Snyder, Police-Corrections Partnerships, Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 1999), https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/175047.pdf (accessed September 21, 2011).

Information Sharing - Problem Solving - Prevention (Enhanced Supervision)

Specialized Enforcement - Apprehension

Table 1 presents an activity-based view, using the results of our site visits and literature review. These 3

partnerships are characterized by many common elements (activities). The array of jurisdictions displayed is entirely random, based primarily on the possibility that these may represent “leading practice” agencies.

EXAMPLES OF TYPES OF PARTNERSHIP ACTIVITIES

Partnership Activity

Supervising high-risk probationers • • • • • • •

Supervising high-risk parolees • • • •

Joint warrant apprehension programs • • • • •

Reentry programs [providing resources and support] • • • •

Information exchange regarding specific offenders • • • • • • • •

Joint crime analysis • • • • • •

Crime reduction efforts focused on specific crime problems • • • • • • •

Shared public safety strategy development • • • • • •

Branford, CT High P oint, NC Minneapolis, MN Topeka, KS Savannah, GA Boston, MA Providence, RI Orange County , CA

Information exchange is the most common activity we observed/encountered. Our informal survey of agencies’ experiences with corrections partnerships bears this out. The survey also provides insight into the various types of active partnerships. Seventy-three percent of respondents conduct joint field operations with probation/parole. Of joint operations, monitoring high-risk offenders, criminal investigations, and specialized enforcement operations (stings, round-ups) are the most common activity types. Nonoperational partnerships (e.g., training, community meetings) are less common.

The efforts of this project suggest that the practices commonly referred to as police-corrections partnerships are a mix of information transfers and joint field initiatives. The lack of an identifiable typology makes it difficult to grasp the field. No standard metric exists by which to categorize existing partnerships or measure their effectiveness.

SECTION 2: PAR TNERSHIP OBJECTIVES

Effective partnerships are built where the goals of police and corrections intersect: crime control. Both entities seek to control and reduce crime but from different perspectives. Police do so by apprehending criminals, whereas corrections seek to rehabilitate. The key to successful partnering is understanding and respecting these different but complementary perspectives. With crime reduction as the core objective, the

“case” for partnerships can be made on the promise of achieving one or more ancillary objectives:

z Increased safety—for both police officers and correctional officers z Productive use of resources

z Response to expressed citizen and community concerns

z Applications of emerging and evolving data-driven strategies based on intelligence-led

and predictive policing concepts

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

4 ^{Figure 1}

RATIONALE FOR POLICE CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS

INCREASE OFFICER SAFETY

USE RESOURCES MORE PRODUCTIVELY REDUCE CRIME USE INTELLIGENCE-LED

AND PREDICTIVE POLICING-BASED

DATA-DRIVEN STRATEGIES

RESPOND TO CITIZEN AND COMMUNITY

CONCERNS

1. Crime Reduction

Reducing crime in our communities, especially violent crime, is and should continue to be the driving force behind creating police-corrections partnerships.

Experiences across the country indicate that when joint resources of police and corrections are applied to supervise high-risk probationers and parolees, offenders can be deterred from committing new crimes. Table 2, in Chapter II, offers compelling examples of partnerships that yielded quantifiable and anecdotal crime reductions.

The practitioners who composed our focus groups, colleagues at the sites we studied, and other professionals who participated formed a consensus in favor of a partnership-based deterrence strategy. Their reasoning follows:

You can arrest them, but they don’t go away. Most offenders who are convicted of crimes serve their sentences in the community. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, at the end of 2009, about 4.3 million individuals were on probation in the United States and another 800,000 were serving sentences on parole. These figures far surpass the two million persons currently incarcerated in both jails and prisons.

Almost all of the individuals who are incarcerated eventually return to the community. Absent meaningful intervention and deterrence, most return to commit new crimes. The Bureau of Justice Statistics conducted a study of 272,111 prisoners released across 15 states. Within three years of release, two-thirds of these offenders were rearrested for committing an estimated 306,100 new crimes. More than half were back in jail.

Rearrest, not paralleled by prevention, deterrence, or treatment strategies, is not a long-term answer. Police are not well positioned to impose the blend of options in isolation.

Criminals decide whether or not to commit another crime. Many offenders make choices based on what they understand as the costs and benefits of their behavior. As police in High Point, North Carolina, have documented, offenders make judgment calls based on their beliefs about the benefits of the crime they could commit weighed against the likelihood of getting apprehended. The cost-benefit mind-set of returning offenders is shown in figure 2. With, among, and through partners, police can multiply the opportunities to influence the mind-set of those likely to engage in further criminality.

2 Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994, Patrick A. Langan, Ph.D., David J. Levin, Ph.D., 2002.

5

Most crimes are unreported.

z Most crimes are unreported.

z Most criminals are not apprehended.

z When apprehended, chances of lengthy incarceration are low.

z Most arrests will result in probation.

z Probation has no “teeth.”

z Most violations of terms of probation, including new crimes, will go unnoticed.

Leverage Complementary Resources to Reduce Recidivism. Police often apply the Pareto principle (i.e., the “80/20 rule”) to offenders in their communities, purporting that 20 percent of the criminals are responsible for 80 percent of the crime. True or not, recidivism is a core concern of police and corrections.

To control reoffending and generally make the system work better, police and corrections must share knowledge of and access to information on known offenders. Latent and potentially useful information is discussed later in the report. Strategically leveraging these data on repeat and high-risk offenders can reduce recidivism, ultimately driving down crime.

2. Guarding Of ficer Safety

Information sharing across agencies can enhance officer safety significantly for both police and correctional officers. Information is power . . . and safety. At the most basic level, police officers should know when dangerous individuals are released from prison. They should be informed at roll call to expect to see a named offender back on the street. They should have handheld devices and/or cruiser laptops with up-to-date information on the status of paroled offenders. The more officers know about the tendencies and habits of the dangerous persons they encounter, the more they can take steps to protect themselves.

Similarly, correctional officials benefit greatly from knowledge of offender behavior and interactions with police prior to incarceration. Data-driven solutions can help both police and corrections prioritize their approaches to handling known offenders.

3. Addressing Citizen Concerns

Citizens are not comfortable with offenders returning to their neighborhoods. Indeed they are consciously wary. Parents, guardians, and school officials express particular concern about offenders who reside near schools. Complaints about drug corners and gang members or perceived gang members loitering are conveyed to police with regularity. Opportunities for both proactive and reactive police responses are multiplied by the information and intelligence that correctional partners can supply. Moreover, police response to communities, groups, and individuals is likely to be more credible when agencies can point to partnership arrangements that demonstrate police are not working in isolation.

4. Intelligence-Led and Predictive Policing

Data-driven policing, symbolized preeminently by intelligence-led and predictive research and discourse, is powered by information. While not yet singled out for attention, as a package, it seems obvious that corrections-supplied information needs to be factored into on-the-ground efforts. Meshing traditional police crime data with corrections offender data can lead to a new level of tactical crime analysis and data-driven policing. Geospatial crime forecasting, risk assessments, and prioritization for offenders and crime locations are among the possibilities.

Figure 2

OFFENDERS’ RISK MANAGEMENT MODEL

Estimate of Risk

Source: High Point, North Carolina, Police Department

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

6 Similarly, corrections institutions, many with intelligence and analytical units, stand to benefit from law enforcement intelligence. Police data on offenders can inform and enlighten inmate intake and management. Community corrections, with knowledge of police interactions with offenders, can adjust the intensity of supervision as needed.

The sources and potential applications of police-corrections data sharing for strategic crime control are presented in greater detail in Chapter III.

5. The Productivity Imperative

Law enforcement agencies and their parent governments are struggling to absorb the most consequential resource reductions in decades. The same is true for state correctional institutions; community supervision is increasingly becoming a cost-saving alternative to incarceration. A turnaround is not in sight. For many agencies, core services are at risk. Preservation of public and officer safety is increasingly contingent upon exercise of best policy and operational practices, managed cost-effectively. The threat is generating reexamination of the police role in our society as well as early-stage discussions of new, return on investment (ROI)-driven business models. In this context the resource multiplying value of partnerships is unarguably an imperative.

Partnerships Are Force and Capacity Multipliers. Shared supervision and joint warrant apprehension teams typify partnership field operations that multiply manpower, normally situationally.

Augmentations are essentially no-cost.

All arrangements multiply information and intelligence to enhance analysis, planning, and operations.

Corrections-to-police reentry and sex offender information exchanges are commonplace. Sharing of information on known offenders and using that information to drive operational efforts can be a force multiplier.

Standard effectiveness and productivity metrics (ROI measurements) for police-corrections partnerships are in short supply. Especially now as both fields are preoccupied with sustaining meaningful levels of

programming, the ability to prove productivity value, is essential.

New Investments Are Marginal. Partnership activities involving direct interaction, such as joint monitoring or task force operations, can be made to blend with existing police functions, staffing arrangements, and policy prescriptions. While some staffing reallocation may be necessary, new investments are negligible and operational interruptions are not required. Information-based

partnerships—such as those presented in Chapter III, vary in the investment of time, depending on the types of information, the format (electronic vs. hard copy), and data system compatibility. Some system enhancement may be required, but most data tracking can be absorbed by existing analysis or records units or handled by volunteers.

Prevention Lowers the Costs of Crime. For law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and society at large, the cost reduction potential of crime prevention is eagerly pursued. The cost of crime is estimated as an aggregate of many meaningful tangible and intangible components. Tangible costs are (usually) subject to quantification using documented expenditure data.

z Costs of criminal justice operations, from police prevention and enforcement through probation and parole activities

z Property loss and destruction z Medical treatment

z Income loss

z Productivity loss

Intangible costs are more difficult to measure, sometimes impossible. 7

z Psychological and emotional suffering of victims and their families and friends z Community fear

z Neighborhood and economic decline or failure to flourish

For present purposes—in evaluating the police-corrections partnership —the cost consideration becomes the value of effective prevention, tangible and intangible. In light of the present economic environment, consider the ROI, the economic trade-off of reallocating and prioritizing present resources, mainly staff, and/or augmenting staff.

Social service literature does not supply an abundance of studies to enlighten these considerations, but as illustrated in Table 2, effective partnerships can reduce crime. While the cost savings are difficult to calculate, it would be foolhardy for budget decision makers to deny investments. The preventive results and potentials of police-corrections partnerships, tangible and intangible, must become priorities in the operations portfolios of every law enforcement agency.

COSTS OF CRIME

z The costs of crime to America are plausibly on the order of $2 trillion per year. By way of comparison, total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United States in 2010 was equal to $14.5 trillion. Put differently, the “crime tax” on Americans—that is, the reduction in quality of life due to crime—is the equivalent of around 14% of GDP.

z Included in the overall cost of crime is around $200 billion in government expenditures on the criminal justice system and another $167 billion in costly private measures to protect people and businesses against crime. Non-pecuniary costs also figure prominently in the burden of crime to American society.

z Given the enormous toll that crime imposes on American society, even costly new initiatives to reduce crime can generate benefits to American taxpayers and citizens that justify the increased government expenditures.

z Particularly cost-effective may be crime-control interventions that focus on those people who are at the highest risk for criminal activity, such as ex-offenders who are re-entering society from prison.

Source:JensLudwig,formerprofessor,GeorgetownPublicPolicyInstitute,GeorgetownUniversity.Testimony

beforetheU.S.SenateJudiciaryCommittee,September19,2006.

 NationalIncomeandProductAccountsTables,2010,BureauofEconomicAnalysis,U.S.Departmentof

Commerce,http://www.bea.gov/national/pdf/dpga.pdf(accessed12/07/11)

The Literature ... 9

Focus Groups ... 10

Site Visits ... 11

Field Survey ... 13

Police Operations Management Studies ... 15

Partnership Options and Evaluation ... 16

Synthesis ... 16

THE STATE OF PRACTICE

9

Since the tentative steps taken by police and probation officers in Boston’s Operation Night Light program over 20 years ago, police practice has tended toward increasing interaction between police and institutional corrections. Police and corrections were firmly entrenched in views of the distinctness of their professions that were isolating. Many police executives prior to 1990 did not recognize the benefits of the broad collaborative strategy of policing that emerged with community policing in the 90s.

The police-corrections concept has developed in the much broader problem-oriented or community-oriented approach to crime and disorder. In one sense, a police-corrections partnership is a problem-solving

instrument. It strategically focuses public resources on the individuals most likely to generate harm and cause disorder problems in communities. The community policing, problem-solving environment notwithstanding, it is impossible to speak authoritatively about how much and how well police-corrections partnerships have developed.

This project documents and attempts to answer, in an informed manner, such questions as the following:

z How many law enforcement agencies have arrangements with corrections partners that are more than transitory?

z What are the types and prevalence of arrangements?

z What are the level and nature of resource commitments?

z What are the internal structural arrangements—organizational location and accountability?

z Are there clear outcomes and other evaluation metrics?

During this project the authors worked industriously to fill gaps in knowledge of current practice, beginning with an examination of literature, followed successively by two focus groups, field visits, two additional focus groups, and finally a survey of law enforcement agencies. Despite the concentration of effort, progress was limited. As is so often the case, it took most of the project to determine how questions should be asked!

Much work remains to be done.

SECTION 1: THE LITERATURE

The bookends of the literature, defined by utility for this work, are the seminal 1999 National Institute of Justice Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice document Police-Corrections Partnerships, Promoting Partnerships between Police and Community Supervision Agencies: How Coordination Can Reduce Crime and Improve Safety

from the Urban Institute and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), and the forthcoming Correctional Intelligence, Counter-terrorism, Gangs, Violent Crime and Information Sharing (from the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and BJA). In between is a modest body of relevant journal articles, conference proceedings, and government publications.

Collectively, the literature provides unqualified advocacy for police-corrections partnerships, most commonly supported by foundational statistics on the volume of offenders returning to the communities, the number under probation or parole supervision, and the number unsupervised. There is an accumulation of program descriptions, scattered anecdotal reports on demonstrated benefits and value, but few systematically conducted process or impact evaluations. Expectations of crime reduction through partnerships,

emphasizing deterrence, social service interventions, and behavior modification are prominently theorized;

some partnerships have demonstrated tangible crime reductions. Elements of, conditions for, and barriers to effective partnership building receive frequent and prominent treatment.

3

Jesse Janetta and Pamela Lackman, Promoting Partnerships between Police and Community Supervision Agencies: How Coordination Can Reduce

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

10 The literature, reviewed and summarized in a companion document, does not supply the answers to the questions previously posed. Accordingly, the authors turned to other methods to try to construct a clearer picture of police-corrections partnerships.

SECTION 2: FOCUS GROUPS

Four practitioner focus groups were conducted: Newark, New Jersey (June 2008); San Francisco, California (June 2008); Atlanta, Georgia (September 2010); and Las Vegas, Nevada (November 2010). The agenda evolved from event to event, based on each previous experience. The central topics of exploration remained the same: the state of practice; promising collaborations; building partnerships; and issues and barriers.

Fifteen to twenty practitioners formed each group, primarily from law enforcement and secondarily from probation and parole.

In addition to these field-driven focus groups, IACP hosted a meeting in Alexandria, Virginia (April 2009) of criminal justice educators and researchers, staff from ASCA, and staff from the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) to ensure views of correctional leaders were acknowledged and incorporated.

Although the original intent of the project was to examine police partnerships with community corrections, it became evident at the first session that work could not proceed intelligently without consideration of institutional corrections. Accordingly, IACP representatives participated in two of four regional workshops hosted by ASCA for its companion project on police-institutional corrections partnerships with federal, state, and local law enforcement representatives and other stakeholders. These workshops helped to put the issues and concerns of state corrections leaders in context.

Focus group discussions conveyed a state of practice characterized by the following:

z Interactions are more situational (case specific) and peer-to-peer based, than a product of formal, institutionalized agency programs.

z Simultaneously, formal programming may be multiplying.

z An absence of typologies and a common police-correction partnership language steers and restricts discussion.

z Themes and issues commonly covered in the literature did not surface; one such issue the authors were led to expect that did not surface was that conflicting goals of police and community corrections serve as a barrier to effective relationships.

The following focus group observations influenced final orientation of the project, and these ideas have become part of this final product:

z Partnership activity is “boutique” in nature rather than a value that is prioritized by and suffuses the police culture.

z Among agencies that have formal arrangements, there is excitement about results and potentials.

z Probation objectives, operations, and information assets are insufficiently understood by law enforcement officers.

z Community-oriented policing concepts are evident in partnership arrangements, most notably strategies

for effective partnering and problem solving.

11

z Impact and process evaluation data to define and identify successful police-corrections partnerships are in very short supply. This is due, in large part, to failing to define goals and intended outcomes of interactions.

z Federal and some state contributors emphasized the potential of existing and developing information exchange assets, fusion centers, and information sharing systems such as N-DEx and RISS (Regional Information Sharing Systems). These and like assets can be a key to growing the number and nature of productive partnerships.

SECTION 3: SITE VISITS

There were numerous site or field visits of two types. One was the standard case-study visitation to examine programs identified as promising through the focus groups and the literature review. Sites included Topeka, Kansas; Branford, Connecticut; Minneapolis,

Minnesota; High Point, North Carolina; Doylestown, Pennsylvania;

Savannah, Georgia; and East Palo Alto, California. Summaries of some of the programs observed appear as sidebars throughout this report.

The second type of field study included regional visits to

Washington, D.C. metro-area police agencies to compare evolving focus group and literature findings to perceptions of working level officers and investigators. Sites included Alexandria, Virginia; Arlington County, Virginia; Fredericksburg, Virginia; Baltimore, Maryland;

Prince William County, Virginia;

and the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force. We believe the randomness of this grouping may be more representative of typical agencies across the nation.

For these visits, staff elected to meet solely with law enforcement practitioners—primarily detectives working in violent crimes, vice and narcotics, gangs, and sex offenses—

to gauge how corrections assists them in investigations. Staff sought

SAVANNAH IMPACT PROGRAM (SIP)

In 2001, following consecutive years of violent crime incidents perpetrated by repeat offenders, the City of Savannah initiated local partnerships with the Georgia Department of Corrections, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Department of Juvenile Justice, and the State Department of Labor to more effectively supervise high-risk probationers and parolees (adults and juveniles) and improve overall reentry efforts. In 2002, partnerships were formalized with the creation of the Savannah Impact Program (SIP), which employs a holistic approach to probationer and parolee management. Law enforcement and corrections practitioners work alongside one another in and out of the office, sharing intelligence on probationers, parolees, and some individuals identified to have a propensity for criminal behavior (primarily juveniles).

Full-time SIP staff, including but not limited to police officers, probation and parole officers, juvenile justice practitioners, and State Department of Labor employees, conduct joint operations that involve house visits, cognitive and employment training sessions, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and school visits and presentations.

SIP seeks to identify the specific needs of the individual

offenders served by the program. Following an entry-level

evaluation of each client, staff members identify such needs

and develop a comprehensive supervision approach that is

tailored to the individual. A multidisciplinary team monitors

offenders to ensure they are meeting the terms and conditions

of their community corrections sanctions (e.g., staying

drug-free, paying restitution, meeting curfews) and assists them

in securing legitimate employment, stable housing, necessary

treatment and counseling, and a solid social network. For

parolees being released into Chatham County, this SIP

evaluation process begins six weeks in advance with the

assistance of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles and the

Georgia Department of Corrections.

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

12 to identify the ways in which agency practitioners worked both formally and informally with corrections, something that could seemingly be best accomplished through informal and candid discussions regarding the dynamics of such relationships. Key findings from these site visits include the following:

1. Nature of Partnerships

Agency investigators varied in their responses to questions posed by IACP staff concerning the dynamics of and the extent to which they work with corrections practitioners. The nature of police-corrections interaction ranged from tenuous to very cooperative and cordial. Overall, agency investigators recognized the advantages of collaboration with corrections practitioners and noted the benefits to information sharing and joint operations. Respondents all noted that they interact with probation, parole, and jailers in some capacity, though frequency tended to vary by individual and department. In terms of the formality of collaboration, partnerships tended to be informal in nature, with the exception of the Baltimore City Police Department, which is engaged in a number of formal partnerships with corrections.

2. Common Activities

The level of activity ranges from low (one task force or periodic meetings) to moderate (regular meetings and multiple task forces) to highly active (joint task forces; embedded officers). Common activities include information exchanges and joint meetings. Information exchange ranged from monthly lists of probationers and parolees to a shared web-based platform. Joint meetings occurred at various levels, some on an ad hoc, as needed basis, while one agency conducts weekly information sharing sessions with probation and parole command staffs.

3. Keys to Success

The importance of personal contacts, mutually respectful relationships, and trust building were noted

repeatedly as keys to success. Successful collaboration and information exchange depends on the individual;

some probation and parole officers tend to be very forthcoming and cooperative with law enforcement, while others may not. Respondents generally acknowledged that philosophical differences in mission between

EAST PALO ALTO POLICE DEPARTMENT AND CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION (CDCR) COMMUNITY-BASED COALITION

In April 2007, the East Palo Alto City Council authorized the City Manager and the Police Department (PD) to contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in order to implement the East Palo Alto Community-Based Coalition (CBC). This coalition operates under the direction of the East Palo Alto Police Department and integrates government, community, and faith-based organizations in order to assist parolees in reintegration through blended programming and enforcement services. The stated goal for this initiative is reduction of parolee recidivism rates in the City of East Palo Alto.

The partnership was formed as a three and a half year pilot program and was funded with $3.4 million

(or $949,000 annually). The product of six months of collaboration, CBC is designed to serve 120

parolees annually. A Day Reporting Center within walking distance of the East Palo Alto police

headquarters serves as a single reporting location for parolees to receive a host of reentry services

including cognitive and life training courses taught by employees of Free At Last and JobTrain, local

community-based organizations. One state parole officer and two East Palo Alto PD officers are also

staffed at the center full-time.

13

SECTION 4: FIELD SURVEY

The final effort to capture partnership conditions and practices was a limited scope, quick turnaround field survey. Completed responses are displayed in Appendix A.

1. The Sur vey

A 21-question survey posed two sets of parallel questions, one set to assess police partnerships with community correction agencies, the second to assess partnerships with corrections institutions. The surveys were distributed to active law enforcement personnel from four IACP standing committees, with combined membership approximating 120: Community Policing; Patrol and Tactical Operations; Professional Standards; Image and Ethics; and Investigative Operations. While membership of these committees spans agencies of all sizes and the country geographically, no effort was made to structure a sample. (The committees have members representing federal law enforcement.)

2. Response

A total of 91 responses were received. Overwhelmingly, responding agencies are (city) municipal, 94 percent. Measured by sworn officers the size distribution follows:

SWORN OFFICERS PERCENT OF RESPONDENTS

1 – 5 2.0%

6 – 15 5.9%

16 – 25 7.8%

26 – 49 15.7%

50 – 99 19.6%

100 – 249 29.4%

250 – 499 9.8%

500 – 999 2.0%

1,000+ 7.8%

Thirty-four (34) agencies, 37 percent (37%), failed to indicate size.

Responses were received from agencies in 27 states, with California (5), Kansas (5), and Texas (8), being the leading respondents.

agencies can have a huge bearing on overall successes and failures of collaborative work. While the direct involvement of executive staff is not needed, their support and consent are.

4. Challenges

Common challenges to police corrections partnerships include turnover among key personnel, requiring the

reestablishment of personal relationships as noted above, and teaching young officers the value of

collaborations. Confusion between parties over what information can be legally shared and what cannot

was another common obstacle.

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

14 3. Findings

Findings that are most useful for painting a picture of police-corrections partnerships include the following:

Information Exchange and Access. Eighty-two percent of responding agencies (90 for this question) receive or have ready access to information from correctional institutions and/or state personnel.

A smaller proportion, 72 percent, receive or have access to information from local probation and parole agencies.

Database. Types of information received or available from correctional institutions is very wide ranging. In descending order of frequency, the range includes photographs and video images; criminal histories; gang affiliations; personal histories; release information; visitors; recorded conversations; criminal activity while in detention; emergency contacts; family members and associates; rules violations and disciplinary actions; and commissary activity (who paid and how much).

Types of information received or available from probation and parole range less widely and differ in nature.

In descending order of frequency, the range includes criminal histories; conditions of probation and parole;

personal histories; employment information; and family members.

Exchange Media. Police-institution information transfer technologies and communications procedures are, from most to least widely reported, shared databases; e-mail; telephone; in person; hard copy; and regular data transfers.

With regard to probation and parole, police use e-mail and telephone most frequently, in-person interaction only slightly less, followed by hard copy, shared databases, with regular data transfers being least

prominent.

Information Use. The three most prominent uses of institution-supplied information by police agencies are to conduct or enhance criminal investigations; locate and arrest criminal suspects; and for officer safety bulletins. Less frequent uses include crime and offender mapping applications; developing crime reduction initiatives; preparing for (and using the information) during community meetings and while responding to citizen inquiries.

The pattern of the use of community corrections-supplied information is very similar to that described above.

Joint Initiatives. Almost three-quarters, 73 percent, of responding police agencies conduct or have conducted joint field operations with community corrections agencies and officers. More than one-quarter, 27 percent, have not. The frequency of these field operations was not addressed.

Joint prevention and enforcement activities that police conduct with probation and parole agencies and officers most frequently are monitoring high-risk parolees and probationers; conducting specialized enforcement operations (stings and roundups); participating in crime- and offender-specific task force activities; conducting sex offender monitoring operations; and performing criminal investigations. (The frequency of joint prevention and enforcement activities was not assessed.)

A bare majority of responding agencies 52 percent report that partnership activity is restricted to field-based or operational activities. In settings where partnerships go beyond field operations, activities include joint training, joint development of enforcement strategies and initiatives, crime meetings, and community meetings.

Objectives and Outcomes. Police-corrections arrangements are not characterized by clearly defined

and measurable objectives and outcomes. Only 7 percent of respondents reported partnerships supported

by measurable objectives. About 65 percent declared their partnerships to be characterized by “general

and mutually understood” objectives and outcomes. Twenty percent describe the purpose (objectives) to be

“vague.” Nine percent responded “don’t know.” We presume this condition characterizes the situational, 15

one-time initiative as well as ongoing relationships.

Priority of Objectives. Fifty-eight percent of respondents indicated that the most important objective is to satisfy stakeholder concerns, especially community members; 56 percent indicate that the second most important objective is to use resources more wisely. The least frequent response was to prevent or reduce crime. This response is wholly unexpected based on focus group discussions, which emphasize prevention and control of crime and victimization. Another survey question asks how information from partnerships is used. The primary response is to conduct and enhance investigations. The apparent disconnect between survey answers and other result is not explainable.

Formal Evaluation. Very little formal evaluation of partnerships is conducted. Eighty-three percent of respondents report that no formal evaluation has been conducted. Twelve percent responded “don’t know.”

This is explained by the Objectives and Outcome findings.

Value. Slightly more than half of a limited number of respondents (26, 54%) cite “information sharing” as a response to the open-ended question “what aspects and/or results of partnership are of greatest value?”

Examples include shared database; getting information; and exchange of information. Communications and cooperation was the next highest response of respondents. Examples include the open communication between agencies; a willingness to help; and communication, training, and collaboration.

Informal/Experiential Evaluation. Only three percent of respondents rate their partnerships as highly effective. However, about one-third (37%) indicate that their partnerships are (were) effective, paralleled by 32 percent that rate them somewhat effective. A small minority of respondents (5%) rate partnerships as ineffective.

Essentials for Partnerships. To form, conduct, and sustain successful police-corrections partnerships, the most essential ingredients follow:

z Information exchange (16 responses) z Communications (12 responses)

z Positive working relationships (8 responses)

z Clear objectives, including lines of authority (4 responses)

The priority factors offered are congruent with those selected in the values question.

Advancing Police-Corrections Partnerships. Of respondents who believe in the value and potential benefits of police-corrections partnerships (59) the research and tools they desire most are programs and practices information (40); evidence-based evaluations (37); and implementation models (32).

SECTION 5: POLICE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT STUDIES

The IACP evaluates the conditions, policies, and practices of many police agencies. These engagements probe deeply into matters of organization, staffing, and programming. They concentrate on goals and objectives; training; information management; and databases, both internal and linked, and assemble a wide range of metrics. These evaluations have not focused deliberately on police-corrections partnerships.

The expectation, however, was that studies would surface, at least occasionally, that showed the presence

POLICE-CORRECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS COLLABORATING FOR STRATEGIC CRIME CONTROL

16 of partnerships. This has not occurred. The survey data indicate a greater presence than was found. Most likely, the response is more reflective of reality, and studies, simply, have not been attentive or focused to find partnerships. Due to the absence of priority accorded to partnerships, they remain more an afterthought rather than a mainstream operational strategy.

SECTION 6: PAR TNERSHIP OPTIONS AND EVALUATION

Neither a directory or clearinghouse, nor a one-stop point-of-contact exists for police to access that outlines existing partnership options. Government-funded research reports, reentry and sex offender project reports in particular, feature snapshots of partnership programs, explicitly or implicitly presented as “best practices.”

This current knowledge-base is valuable for conveying the program designs and successes.

Table 2 arrays the names, locations, and foci of 13 partnerships. Culled from literature and research, published and unpublished, the criterion for inclusion is the centrality of preventing new crimes by returning offenders or new offenders—proof of crime reduction. The goal was to eliminate the randomness of choices in some other works. The reductions have been sizeable in many cases. These encouraging findings justify future work to build on this portfolio.

SECTION 7: SYNTHESIS

More work remains to frame the state-of-practice of police-corrections partnerships. The efforts of this project suggest that the practices commonly referred to as police-corrections partnerships are a mix of information transfers and joint field initiatives, occurring with a frequency that is still uncharted. If the number of agencies that receive or have ready access to corrections agency information can be used as a metric for prevalence, police-corrections partnerships may be more widespread than expected. At the same time, the lack of information on how frequently information is exchanged and joint operations are conducted precludes suggesting more than that the potential is very positive. Police-corrections partnership practices are still a peripheral, evolving, and promising police practice and asset.

Each state-of-practice exercise reinforces the current value and potential of investing in partnerships. A willingness to explore and technical readiness to do so seem to exist among police agencies. Unlike studies of best practices or pre-selected advocacy practitioners commonly gathered to explore innovations, this work subjected the “idea” of partnerships to a random (admittedly unscientific) sample of the field: the survey group and the regional site visits. These groups noted the value and effectiveness of this experience.

Information is valued most highly in the field. A partnership based on information is, perhaps, the simplest to establish and has the potential to generate consistent outcomes. Information sharing and exchange are the basis for more tactical and operational partnerships for strategic crime control. Law enforcement is receiving—and is technologically equipped to receive more—information from both institutional and community corrections agencies. This infrastructure justifies proceeding with design and implementation of a model called for by practitioners in the field. One design is offered next.

Considering responses to questions concerning attributes of police-corrections partnerships, effectiveness,

and uses of information, there clearly seems to exist a readiness to engage more aggressively.

17

Table 2 POLICE-CORRECTIONS P ARTNERSHIPS WITH CRIME CONTROL IMP ACT Program Name Location Year Began Focal P oint(s) of P artnership Impact Operation Night Light Boston, MA 1992 Infor mation sharing, targeted super vision, and zero tolerance

Repor ted sharp drops in the number of homicides, homicides with firear ms, and assaults with firear ms. Parolee-At-Large (P AL) Apprehension T eams Califor nia 1996 Locate and apprehend absconders

Parolee-at-large cases were reduced by more than 1,000 from projected levels. P

AL Apprehension T eams seized more than 300 firear ms. Juvenile Intensive Ser vice T eam Campbell County , KY 2000 Intensive super vision and infor mation sharing

Seventy-one percent of the juveniles in the program have not re-offended. Violent Crimes T ask Force

High Point and W 1998 Infor mation sharing, inston-Salem, NC enhanced super vi - sion, and tracking

Twenty percent reduction in crime citywide and a 40 percent reduction in crime in “hot spot” neighborhoods. The recidivism rate in High Point is half the state average.

Going Home Prepared Program Las V egas, NV 2002 Enhanced super vision and infor mation sharing

Recidivism rate dropped from 80 percent before the program was implemented to 39 percent after

. Southwest Los Angeles Gang Par tnership Los Angeles, CA 2007

Intelligence sharing and focus on special population

Violent crime dropped 41percent in the Southwest Division. Indianapolis V iolence Reduction Par tnership Marion County , IN 1997 Targeted law enforce - ment and super vision Results show a reduction in homicide rates during the program. Mentoring Par tnership Minneapolis, MN Mentoring and rehabilitation

In downtown Minneapolis, the program has contributed to an overall 71 percent drop in repor

ted crime. The Minneapolis Police Depar tment’ s (MPD) chief has noted that “The par tnership is

cost-effective for the MPD. It makes good policy sense, and it makes good financial sense.”

Project One V oice New Haven, CT 1997 Intensive sur veillance and joint operations Unquantified declines in violent and proper ty crimes in the target neighborhood were revealed. Ogden Project T eam Ogden, UT 2005 Focused deterrence Par t I crimes decreased 23 percent in the target area Racine Community Reentr y Program Racine, WI 2004 Infor mation sharing and super vision Reduced recidivism and a rearrest rate of less than 25 percent. Sixty-five percent of program par ticipants are employed; 64 percent are crime-free. Intensive Super vision Program Richland County , OH 1998 Intense super vision and monitoring Numbers from the Richland County Sheriff ’s Office showed a 4.5 percent reduction in violent and proper ty crimes within the county and a 13 percent reduction in Madison T ownship. Fugitive Recover y Enforcement T eam San Francisco, CA 1993 Locate and apprehend violators San Francisco’ s parolees-at-large population dropped by 12 percent between 1993 and 1997.

A Corrections-Based Information Model for Police .. 19 Data Elements ... 20 Data Management and Integration ... 28 Incorporating the Model ... 29

A POLICE-LED

PARTNERSHIP MODEL

Law enforcement practitioners regard police-corrections partnerships favorably as an effective crime 19

prevention and enforcement strategy and, even more so, as a technique to satisfy citizen concerns, often regarding the presence of returning offenders to the neighborhoods in which they commonly reside. Police engagement with institutional and community corrections agencies is probably increasing; certainly, information-linked engagement is increasing, no doubt powered by sex offender legislation and mandates and strong advocacy for reentry initiatives. However, many police-corrections partnerships are time and target transitory. Corrections engagement is not a priority among police crime control strategy choices. This is attributable to a constellation of factors that include an absence of federal funding and advocacy, a silo culture with a tendency to regard system-wide criminal justice coalitions passively, and simple inertia caused by a lack of knowledge on where and why to begin.

It is the authors’ view that the primary emphasis in literature, research, and practice has been on partnership-building, cross-agency structures, and arrangements. There has been limited concentration on how the police-corrections concept can be tailored, fitted, and organically blended into everyday law enforcement and corrections operations to drive information-led crime reductions. Responding to this belief, the authors present an idea—a challenge—that police recognize the mutual benefits of police-corrections partnerships and take a leadership position by reaching out to institutional and community corrections to share data and drive smart, strategic crime control efforts.

SECTION 1: A CORRECTIONS-BASED INFORMATION MODEL FOR POLICE

Practitioners cite information as the most valuable asset of police-corrections partnerships. Information sharing and exchange represent the most basic of partnerships and the building block upon which more collaborative crime control efforts can be initiated. Corrections information can and should inform police operations. All indications show a substantial range of information is transferred to police routinely by various media, is accessible, and is or can be supplemented by person-to-person contact. These

characteristics, along with an apparent appreciation for the potentials of partnerships, are the foundational underpinnings of the model described next.

A graphic concept of a model designed to enhance desired public safety outcomes of police is presented in figure 3. Very simply stated, police are urged to do the following:

z Develop and institutionalize the most comprehensive base of information that corrections agencies can supply, that has potential use for traditional and innovative police operations (such as patrol, investigations, special operations, crime analysis, CompStat, smart or predictive policing, and fusion center data exchanges).

z Weave the use of the information as seamlessly as possible into those operations.

z Monitor and evaluate the value and ROI of the approach to improve value or take other action, which could include shutting the process, or parts thereof, down.

z Offer police data on offenders to corrections, including gang information, field interviews, and traffic

stops.